[wos] idea for new panel: "Three Grand Experiments of the 20th Century"

[Jeanette Hofmann]

On 2 Sep 2003 at 14:56, Volker Grassmuck wrote:

Erzählungen über die großen Männer des 20. Jahrhunderts reflektieren die
Geschichtsschreibung des 19 Jahrhunderts. Wohin das dann führt, zeigt
schon die Zusammenstellung der Namen: Lenin, Soros, Stallman. Sorry, aber
das kann doch wohl nur ein Witz sein.
Müssen wir die Theorie der großen Männer unbedingt immer wieder aufs
Neue aus der Mottenkiste zerren?

Jeanette

> Hi everybody,
>
> while talking with Vera Franz and Darius Cuplinskas of the Open
> Society Institute in Budapest last week, lots of ideas emerged, among
> them that for the following panel. Among many specific topics, this
> could be the Big Picture Panel. What do you think?
>
> Volker
>
>
> Three Grand Experiments of the 20th Century
> Communism, Open Society, Commons
>
> The Russian Revolution started the large-scale in situ experiment of
> establishing a communist  society, and half the globe participated.
> After its failure became apparent and the experiment came to a
> grinding halt, one man single-handedly attempted to turn former
> socialist Eastern Europe into an Open Society. With free software,
> the late 20th century saw another revolution. While not a vision for
> a complete social system, its protagonist continually asks what kind
> of society we want to live in.
>
> The three experiments, connected to the names of Lenin, Soros and
> Stallman are distinguished by their respective property regime: state
> ownership, private ownership, and community ownership of essential
> goods.
>
> As we move forward into the 21st century, neo-liberalism is still the
> dominant mode. At the same time, it becomes apparent that there are
> public goods of which the state should be in charge. The re-
> nationalization of British Railways is a symbol for this trend.
> Commons goods which have regularily been slandered using Garret
> Hardin s idea of the  tragedy of the commons" have powerfully proven
> their viability by free software and other forms of informational
> goods produced, owned, and managed by a community.
>
> Globalization has changed the scope of these issues. Corporations and
> industry groups have made the world their oyster. Inter-governmental
> organizations create frameworks attempting to ensure global public
> goods like economic stability, security, environment, humanitarian
> assistance and knowledge. The means of informational production and
> the means of global communications turned into commodities available
> to endusers, and enable productive global communities of individuals.
>
> The panel looks back at the lessons learned from the three grand
> experiments of the 20th century, and asks for the right balance
> between private, state and commons regimes in he 21st century.
>
>
> Possible speakers
>
> On (post-)communism:
>
> * Slavoj Zizek, Ljubljana
> Bio: http://www.ff.uni-lj.si/filo/english/staff/zizeka.htm
> Biblio: http://lacan.com/bibliographyzi.htm
> Repeating Lenin:
> http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ot/zizek1.h
> tm
> Excerpts from the introduction to the 150th anniversary edition of
> The Communist Manifesto
> http://www.arkzin.com/munist/ziz1e.htm
>
>
> On Open Society:
>
> * George Soros
> Bio: http://www.soros.org/gsbio/
> Biblio: http://www.soros.org/gsbio/writings.html
> Opening the Soviet System, 1990
> http://www.osi.hu/oss/index.html
> Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism, 2000
> http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/books/ope-sum.html
>
> * Istvan Rev [preliminarily agreed to participate]
> Professor of history and political science at Central European
> University Budapest; Director Open Society Archives; member of the
> OSI board. Since the early 1980s Rev has published widely on the
> political cultural, and architectural history of Hungary and other
> Eastern bloc countries. Since the political transformations of 1989,
> he has emerged as one of the most highly regarded writers on issues
> of post-socialism, publishing on various dimensions of the transition-
> such as official and popular memory, state discourse and popular
> resistance, andthe status of socialist-era monuments-in journals such
> as Daedalus, Dissent, and Representations.
> Bio: http://www.ceu.hu/hist/pages/cv/rev.html
>
>
> On Free Software/Commons:
>
> * Richard Stallman
> [might not agree because he doesn't want free software to be talked
> about in the neighbourhood of communism.]
>
> * Yochai Benkler
> http://www.benkler.org
>  Freedom in the Commons, Towards a Political Economy of Information"
> http://realserver.law.duke.edu/ramgen/frey/benkler.rm
>
> * Larry Lessig
>
> * Elinor Ostrom
>
>
> Quotes
>
>  And why are we, from the "post-Communist" Eastern European
> countries, the ones to assume this task? Because we are compelled to
> live out and sustain the contradiction of the global capitalist New
> World Order at its most radical. The ideological dream of a unified
> Europe aims at achieving the (impossible) balance between the two
> components: full integration into the global market; retaining the
> specific national and ethnic identities. What we are getting in the
> post-Communist Eastern Europe is a kind of negative, distopian
> realization of this dream - in short, the worst of both worlds,
> unconstrained market combined with ideological fundamentalism. [...]
> Are we then condemned to the debilitating alternative of choosing
> between a knave or a fool, or is there a tertium datur? If The
> Communist Manifesto still has something to say to us, then there is
> still hope for a tertium datur." (Slavoj Zizek, Introduction to The
> Communist Manifesto)
>
>  Markets are eminently suitable for the pursuit of private interests,
> but they are not designed to take care of the common interest. [...]
> Communism sought to abolish the market mechanism and to impose
> collective control over all economic activities. Market
> fundamentalism seeks to abolish collective decision-making and to
> impose the supremacy of market values over all political and social
> values. Both extremes are wrong. [...] I believe that international
> institutions could be made to work better only with the help of civil
> society. It may be true that states have no principles, but
> democratic states are responsive to the wishes of their citizens. If
> the citizens have principles, they can impose them on their
> governments." (George Soros, Open Society: Reforming Global
> Capitalism)
>
>  I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I
> must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to
> divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to
> share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in
> this way. [...]  Many programmers are unhappy about the
> commercialization of system software. It may enable them to make more
> money, but it requires them to feel in conflict with other
> programmers in general rather than feel as comrades. [...] In the
> long run,
> making programs free is a step toward the post-scarcity world, where
> nobody
> will have to work very hard just to make a living. People will be
> free to
> devote themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming,
> after
> spending the necessary ten hours a week on required tasks such as
> legislation,
> family counseling, robot repair and asteroid prospecting." (Richard
> Stallman,
> GNU Manifesto, 1985)
>
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